Tsardom of Russia

The Tsardom of Russia was the name of the centralized Russian state that existed from Ivan the Terrible's adoption of the title "Tsar" in 1547 until the foundation of the Russian Empire by Peter the Great in 1721. Ivan the Terrible launched many campaigns to expand the tsardom, including the conquest of the Khanate of Kazan in 1552 and the Astrakhan Khanate; these victories transformed Russia into a multiethnic and multiconfessional state that now had access to Central Asia. In 1558, Ivan started a fruitless 25-year war, the Livonian War, in an attempt to gain territory in the Baltics. The Nogai Horde and Crimean Khanate used Russia's defeat as an impetus to pillage Russia, and Russia would war with the Tatars until Crimea was annexed in 1783. Under both the Rurikid and Romanov dynasties, Russia added lands the size of the Netherlands to its domain every year from 1551 to 1700, warring with Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, the Ottoman Empire, and the Asiatic tribes of Siberia. In 1689, Peter the Great rose to power, and he transformed the Tsardom into a major European power during the Great Northern War. In 1721, after the defeat of Sweden, Peter proclaimed the Russian Empire.